Yeah, I’ve been seeing these posters for rides in the Spit all along the front range at airports, he’s been doing it for about a year now. He usually does’nt like folks to weigh over 200 pounds (US), but for the amount he’s asking I’m sure he’ll put up with someone over that weight. Greenwood is a nice guy, at once silent, and the next moment chatty as all get-out, depending on the situation. He has been flying local airshows here in Colorado for about the last 15 years, and the Spit is always a popular attraction, being ‘exotic’ as it is…certainly not the kind of plane you would expect to see nestled in the Rocky Mountains, so far from England! We had TWO, until Chris Woods sold his Mk.16 SL721 off to Canada. Ray Middleton does the annuals on Greenwood’s plane and Eddie Kurdziel’s Firefly up the road at Fort Collins, and is restoring the Lone Star Hurricane at the same time. Quite a bit for the British eye to see here in Colorado…..

Where’s my check, Tourism board?

Mark

Bloody well right, Der….after all, I’m part Scot too, or so I’m told….never took to the Haggis munching, tho. Still fancy trying on a family kilt someday (don’t let it get around), maybe at the Scottish festival at Estes Park in Sept next.

Mark

I understand the jist of your wrath (all of you) against ‘americanization’ and the altering of history by American directors and movie companies, and I take your comments with the humor that is intended….but on occasion, I think there is the occasional comment that is MEANT to be mean and designed to get a rise out of Americans….the fact is, some Brits don’t like Yanks, and vice versa. Americans are a very vocal lot, whereas the British (I believe) are a bit more reserved, a bit more POLITE than their American counterparts (until you get them on a forum like this!) I am a big advocate of the British, I enjoy the ties that I have with England, in both my friends and my family….but I was born a Coloradan in the US and as such I guess I just don’t quite understand the big ‘knock’ against Americans all the time. I try to take it with a sense of humor and most of the time it’s easy….but sometimes it just gets annoying being ragged on all the time for being born in another country….And so, I hereby announce that I will be applying for citizenship in my ‘descendant’ land, Wales, near Chepstow alledgedly, and will be working hard to remedy the anti-American sentiments expressed by a few in these forums by attempting to return to England all the warbirds that have EVER found their way to American shores from England and the surrounding region….as long as you lot lay off the Welsh sheep jokes! I hear ONE of them and the whole deal is off! I shall start locally (for now) with Bill Greenwood’s T. Mk. 9 Spitfire in Aspen….

Mark

Not exactly ‘quoting’ the new Air Classics magazine here in the states, Michael O’Leary says that there is a good chance that the Me262 in Seattle will have been repaired and test flown again by the time I get the new magazine (I got it two weeks ago) so there is a VERY good chance she is up and around already…as for her flying this year, I think that’s pretty much a given! Let’s just hope those gear legs hold out! Great phot by the way…love the Rott!

Mark

It ain’t new year’s here yet (only 9:30 Colorado time), but that would make it 4:30 am UK time….happy new year’s, folks…to all in the states and the other side of the Atlantic. Let’s have a safe flying year.

Mark

I’d be curious to know what bar these shots were taken in….if it’s in Greeley, CO, then they were shot at the bar ‘The State Armory’, a popular college hangout where a friend of mine used to play in his band ‘The Price of Blues’. The plane at the armory was alledgedly used in the ‘Twelve o’Clock high’ TV series. The owner of the armory a couple of summers ago loaded up the CAF’s B-17 ‘Sentimental Journey’ with a bunch of spares he had around his establishment and in his own private storage, and it earned him a ride on the B-17 and a low pass over his house in the country on the B-17’s way to its next stop in Wyoming. Look arond the bar if you get a chance to stop by Greeley some day…there are also a couple of windows upstairs made out of canopies (P-47’s? F-86’s?) and other bits and pieces all around…the B-17’s outer wingas are from a DC-3!

Mark

Aviation runs through my whole family, my grandfather helped out with the designing and the promoting of the Corsair fighter with Chance Vought until the company moved to Texas, I used to draw Corsairs from his paintings when I was a child…another grandfather on the other side of the family was in B-17’s early in the war and shot down on his first mission by a Messerschmitt (they got it, though, just as it got them) he carried a metal fragment in his hand from that fighter blowing up right up until his dying day two years ago, and he spent the war in a German POW camp….my step-father trained on T-6’s and Hellcats and eventually went on to F-86’s in Japan during the Korean war, but never saw combat…back in the states he jumped to the Air Force and flew F-100’s, F-102’s, and such before joining United Air lines and retiring some years ago….
Me, I have 35 hours in Cessnas and a student license, but took up aviation photogrpahy in 1989, and I still get a little backseat time in the occasional T-6 like on the trip to oshkosh or somewhere distant….not a bad way to go.

Mark